


The Cave

by Sifl



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: For Pickleandthequeen, Gen, Happy Halloween!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: Once, before Frieza, Dende thought he might understand darkness in all its forms- but this was only one of them, and it was not the same as that.Or, Dende wanders into a cave and Nail saves him.





	The Cave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PickleandtheQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PickleandtheQueen/gifts).



The cave was deep, and dark, and a total unknown. Dende toed the line where the warm sunlight ended and the lip of the shadows began, and counted the faded outlines of the stalactites and stalagmites watching him from the darkness. A strong wind erupted from within its maw, a wind laced with the smell of dirt and something Dende couldn’t know, like the cave was alive and was breathing in his face.

(Rot, he would later learn. The cave’s air smelled like rot. When Dende was born, Namek’s surface was a valley evolving out of a desert, and the sun had robbed the corpses from the dynasty before of the chance to decompose and give water back to the planet. He would find bleached bones and fine dust, but no corpses with wet flesh halfway between muscle and soil.)

The light from Namek’s suns were omnipresent, and the plants, winds, and people thrived beneath it, but other things- bigger things, bloodthirstier things, ruthless creatures- made kingdoms where it couldn’t shine. They remembered a world only the Grand Elder Guru might know anything about from stories of the Grand Elder before, before the suns were three and Namek had a night beyond the one Porunga cast over the land in times of strife.

Dende took a step into the cave, and then another. The air was damp and cold, both unfathomable, unimaginable things anywhere else, and Dende shivered.

Another gust of wind cut through his thin clothing with a moaning howl, and he cried out and covered his face.

Nothing happened.

Dende uncovered himself, one eye at a time, and found a set of yellow eyes staring back at him from the deepest darkness of the cave.

He froze, except for his antennae. They twitched on his head, and before he knew it, he broadcasted his surprise into the cavernous walls and down, down, down into the earth.

“What are you? I am afraid,” he’d blurted, with no more tact than a hatchling who’d yet to learn where the border between private and public thoughts fell, or that there even was one.

The eyes, the three of them, disappeared without an answer. 

Was that good? Was that bad? What were they thinking? What did they know?

(Years later, Dende would know that Frieza could have told him, if he’d a mind to ask. His friends from earth, Dende’s friends who hunted when they needed to and were the hunted when it had to be that way, could tell him in excruciating, objective detail, too, from both sides. Dende did not hunt, and on the surface, in the light, he was not hunted, so he could never know.)

He waited in the darkness, and then, with another dull-scented, rising gust, the yellow eyes reappeared, only closer, and with friends.

Dende ran.

His cloth shoes scuffed against the uneven rock, and he tumbled headfirst into the ground when it caught on his clothing and tripped him. He stuck out his arms and scrambled forwards until he could propel himself into the air like Nail taught him, and looked up to the light filtering in through the cave’s mouth. Then, something wrapped around his leg and held fast, and Dende realized he was being dragged backwards. The light grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and Dende learned in real time that the cave’s depths could- and would- grow darker and colder than he could possibly imagine if he didn’t get away.

He lived his life in the sun. This couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. He couldn’t die in darkness. He couldn’t accept it.

He dug his nails into the earth, and struggled for all he was worth. Something wrapped around his other leg, and then his arm, and then his middle. He screamed to the air, and screamed to the cave, and would have screamed in the face of whatever had him if a white-blue beam of light didn’t cut past his face and beat it back.

The smell of burning shot through the cave, and Dende’s restraints loosened. He scrambled free and kept moving until he hit something solid, and it wrapped around him.

Dende screamed and tried to wriggle away.

“Dende!” it said, and pulled him, struggling, out of the cave and into the light.

The contrast blinded him, and when the white world stopped spinning and came back into view- blue grass, green water, lime sky, yellow dirt- he realized Nail held him.

“Dende!” Nail scolded. His frown was pronounced and definite, and the whites of his eyes were wide beneath the ridge of his stern brow. “If Cargo had not retrieved me, I never would have been close enough to know you were in danger! You could have died!”

Behind Nail, Cargo cowered behind a rock. When he saw Dende move, he stumbled from behind it and ran to the two of them.

“Dende!” cried Cargo.

Dende sniffed. “The,” he said, “the heart. The heart of the planet.” He swallowed. “The wind. I… I wanted to know what caused it.”

Nail’s antennae jumped. “The wind? Dende, we know what causes the wind in caves. There is nothing mysterious causing it.”

Dende looked away from Nail and towards the cave- or the direction the cave might be. They were far away, now, and safe.

“I just wanted to see,” he said.

Nail narrowed his eyes, but then, after a long, hard moment in his own head, put a palm on both Cargo and Dende.

If Nail were a lesser Namek, Dende might fear that he was angry at him. Not Nail, though. Nail’s anger was only righteous, and his instruction was always wise. Nail had been afraid for Dende, not angry at him.

Nail said, “It is alright to be curious, but not reckless. You may never have come back out. You know well about the dangers in the darkness” He looked at Dende. “Will you promise me that you will never enter these caves without me or another from the Warrior Clan ever again?”

Dende didn’t need to promise. He wouldn’t do that again, ever, under any circumstances.

He did it anyway. “I promise,” he said, and threw his arms around Nail.

(Years later, he would break his promise. Son Gohan would lead the way into a cave, and Dende, with Frieza at his back, would follow.)


End file.
